Right, I bought a pair of 650B+ wheels (off roverpig of these here parts) and despite them not being 100%* I slapped them on my Solaris.

I did some short local loops and then, the other weekend, ventured out for a bivi in the Cairngorms with a couple friends….

[url=https://flic.kr/p/Hu7zhd]The camp/bivi site (Sandy fannying about)[/url] by Rotpunkt-UK, on Flickr

All well and good.

Except:
My forks aren’t wide enough for the nobby Nic 2.8″ up front (I’ve two shiney grooves appearing at the brace/bulge and I’m not ready to commit my 29er to the back burner just yet (I even finally got around to changing the front tyre after, oh, only six months).i like a grippy front tyre I do.
And:
Rucksacks aren’t fun.

Soo option, options/opinions.

1. Get new forks that’ll take the fatter wheels. If so what? Needs to be suitable for both duties as I’m not swapping forks as well as wheels…. Any recommendations? I fancy some X-Fusions, any work? And where to get from?

2. New frame set. Saw the Genesis Longtitude in Bothy Bikes. 27.5 compatible, got a ‘spare’ XT 3×10 groupset been gathering dust for a couple years plus bars, stem, saddle could rob the Soul for pin and brakes. But would need to convert 20mm 100mm hub to 110mm Boost (think this is just swapping adaptors, no?). What else to consider in 650B+ at similar price (£500 frame & forks)?

3. What’s the biggest tyre I can run on my WTB i29rear/i35front rims? 3″? How’s that going play on frame(s).

4. Bikepacking gear. I’ve read several threads on here (and blogs). I’m leaning to getting a MSR Hubba NX tent. Can I roll that, my mat and sleeping bag and fit it in a handlebar ‘roll’ bag? Or will it be too much? And a seat pack (with a small (<20L) rucksack/water pouch) for starters will that do? Would only be heading for max of 2 nights until I get the swing of it. I like the idea of the wildcat bundle (lion/tiger/ocelot) as more or less a ‘free’ frame bag. What proper waterproof dry bags to get. I’d also try and check out Revelate stuff when I’m back in Aviemore (do the distributors take visitors to Dalfaber?). And also tempted with the new Ortlieb stuff.

Anybody care to help/give some advice?

ETA: *just to clarify wheels are fine (no shoddy deals from rp) just not best fit in a Reba 29er fork with the NN…

Enough room in a Revelation with 2.8 NN on 45mm rim.

I’m dipping toes in the water here too, have done a very quick bivvi recce with my GP bike – really to check kit, storage and so on.

I used a bivvi bag rather than a tent – I’ve picked up a one man tent of forum, but the poles are a complete arse to carry and it ends up quite bulky all round. Bar bag on Wildcat harness will take most of sleeping kit, then small part frame bag for bits and bobs, seat post bag for cloths and bit of gear, rucksack for – IIRC – sleeping mat.

Plenty blogs out there on bivvi kit – scotroutes, dRjOn e.g.

Having said that re the bike, have taken a Swift with similar wheelset, so hope to use that as capable bike packing for rough stuff..

dry bags and a lot of kit – Alpkit. frame bags – Wildcat. rucksack – Osprey for comfort and solidity.

just my thoughts..

I’ve just done a weekend from Edinburgh to Newcastle.

instagram pic

Seat pack (wildcat harness and tapered Alpkit bag): Lunar solo tent, neoair mat, exped pillow, flip flops, travel towel.

Bars: cumulus quantum 150 quilt and a set of clothes.

Frame bag: single carbon tent pole, bike spares.

Montane batpack 6 for electronics and toiletries.

@boxelder: roverpig was running revs with the wheelset. I was under the impression it was a bit nippy at the bulge also ( but not as bad as my Reba’s I doubt!).

Plus I’m running at 100mm travel, find a Mk I Solaris a bit wandery on steep climbs. Suspect increasing travel would magnify this.

@kcal: yeah, I’d a feeling tent pole would be a pain but thought they could be stowed in frame bag (or rucksack?). I can see a bivi being handy if mat & bag rolled in a oner (quick to set up too!) but I’m prepared to suffer weight penalty for extra space and ability to stow gear under the awning. Mind you at 1160g it’s not much heavier than my current bivi bag…

Don’t suppose you have urls/links for mentioned blogs handy?

I’ve studied Greg Mays, like the idea of the OR (hooped) helium bivi @550g! Just not sure about pertex…

@dknwhy: single skin tent… How does that work for midgies/rain?

Less is definitely more. Trying to limit what else I have to buy in order to keep spend down….

Rucksacks can be OK, if light enough, and if they are not the rigid structured walking type ones that you seem to have there. They are not comfortable riding.

Currently on a shonky network connection but my email and blog are in my profile. Let me know if you’re going to be in Aviemore and you can see, feel, chat about my Revelate gear, tents, bivvy etc.

Andy and Rob at backcountrybiking are usually happy to let you check out stuff.

@scotroutes: that would be pretty useful, thanks! I’d also like to check out your Pact if that was possible too… .?

How does the Revelate hold up to water ingress?

I’ll drop you an email later in the day, cheers.

Wasn’t you on the beach on the loch on friday night up a muick looking at me like you knew me was it ? Apologies if it was I had no idea. One thing on my mind at 11pm 🙂

@molgrips: rucksack is an Osprey Mutant 38, it’s a good sack. The problem is the weight (and bulk) on my back. Distributing that to (over) the bike makes a lot of sense and make things more comfortable. I have a Osprey Talon 18 (or a camelbak running sack) that I intend using for water, clothes, spares, knick knacks..,

@TR: naw, photo is at Loch Eanaich. I’d probably have called you a snob or something if you’d blanked me…

There’s a thread on the Bearbones forums about B+ Talk to me about B+ where I’ve posted (same username) about my experiences so far with my setup so won’t repeat all that here.

I’ve a Mk1 Solaris with an X-Fusion fork (set at 120mm) and a pair of the Alpkit Rumpus wheels, these have a 45mm rim. I’m running a WTB Bridger 3.0″ up front and a WTB Trailblazer 2.8″ in the back. There’s about 2mm gap at the brace bulge – get very occasional rubbing but I’ve a set of Travers Prong carbon forks on the way 😀

Bags: I’ve the Wildcat bags/harnesses, all bought separately as I’ve got into bikepacking but the bundles do look good deals. If you want to try things out then the Alpkit Airlok dry-bags are a good way to go: the tapered one will work as a seat bag and the dual 20L will work on the handlebars. Then if/when you get the harnesses you can just use them as the dry-bags in those. I also use Exped dry-bags – the disadvantage of these on the front is that unless you pack them evenly then they can slip out of the harness, the dual Airlok has webbing loops you can feed the harness straps through. A point about the sizing of the Wildcat Ocelot – I’ve a large frame and got the XL bag, probably should have got the large. If in doubt send them a template of your frame and they’ll sort it out properly.

I can get an Exped Winterlite sleeping mat, a PHD 2 season sleeping bag, a Cumulus 2 season quilt and an Alpkit Hunka XL bivy bag in the 20L Dual Airlok on the front. Weighs 2Kg This would be a winter setup – I have the quilt layered around the sleeping bag for cooler nights. It’s a much more flexible system than having a super-duper 4 season sleeping bag that you might only use one or two nights a year.

I/we use a tarp rather than a tent (not had problems with the flying death so far) and I made the poles up from some old tent poles I happened to have. I measured the frame bag and cut accordingly so they fit in the smaller pocket on the Wildcat Ocelot.

Invariably you will start off by taking too much kit or the wrong kit but over time you’ll figure out what works for you and what you *need* for a given trip. On last year’s Yorkshire Dales 300 I took nearly 10Kg of kit (plus food and water) but it was my first ITT and one of my early bikepacking trips, this year the weight will be around 3Kg depending on weather. The weights include the harnesses and bags BTW.

There’s no *one way* to do things, start with how others have things set up but if they don’t work for you then change it. Have a read through the “Review” section on Bearbones, it’s actually the blog part of the site and isn’t just reviews there’s stuff about setting up tarps, using gear etc.

Ruck sacks are utter pish they are for times when you need to carry extra food.

Fwiw I have the wildcat stuff -very happy with it. Bought a revelate sweet roll as I preferred the long thin shape – turns out it mounts to the bike back in the dark ages. Much prefer the removable dry bag system wildcat uses.

Will tell you how waterproof the revelate is when I brave the garage to unpack 🙂 – it got a soaking on Monday

Ah ok you were up einach.

Some ladswere on a similar beach at muick and seemed to be excited to see me as I rode past.

@dknwhy: single skin tent… How does that work for midgies/rain?

Great for midges as it’s fully sealed and the front opens up fully so you get a great view if dry.
Single skin is ok but you have to pitch it well. We had rain over the weekend and I stayed dry but you have to be careful not to touch the outer and to use the additional pegging points to keep the walls out. Great tent though. Pretty perfect for bikepacking.

Weekends set up up the left – Monday night fords of avon. ….. good weather so set up in midge proof through wind set up.
If weather was in at least 2 sides would be pinned to the floor and into the wind.

One or two quick thoughts/addenda to what I wrote above.

You’ve two enemies when taking kit: weight and bulk. The easiest way to reduce both is not to take stuff! Take a sheet of paper (or use a spreadsheet) and divide in to two columns, in the left column write down everything you take on a trip. After the trip cross out all those items you used and worked as expected. For the rest, if you used it but it wasn’t up to the job then make a note in the RH column. Everything else is thus stuff you didn’t need to take. Obviously things like toolkit and FA kit you hope you never have to use them but you are going to take anyway. Also items like waterproofs are likely to be useful on most trips.

After a few trips you’ll notice that there’s stuff you just don’t use – you’ve packed it “just in case”. So without spending any money you can reduce pack size and weight 😛

You can also reduce the size of items. On the YD300 I took one of those Life Systems First Aid kits. No problem with the kit itself but it weighs 200g and is something like 8cmx6cmx4cm in size. I’m not a trained paramedic so most of what’s in the kit is in the “nice to have” bracket – it’s not going to be of use dealing with a broken leg for example. Generally once you get past cuts and grazes you can improvise – cut up a shirt for a triangular bandage and so on. I know (having had to do it) that I can walk out if I’ve a broken arm or other upper body injury and if I do break a leg then it’s going to be 999 and call out mountain rescue. As a result my “FA kit” is now a few plasters, a couple of medi-wipes, a couple of safety pins and some blister patches. Weight of 10g and it fits in one of those credit card sized zip-lock bags.

A lot of gear comes with its own stuff sack – don’t bother with them, they create dead space in your bags so just shove everything as best you can. When you get “hard” objects like pans or whatever then this lets you pack around them so that they don’t rattle around and possibly damage other stuff.

Finally pack so you can get to stuff in the order that you need it. Having one bag for all your bivy stuff makes sense: roll up to bivy site; get poles and pegs out; tarp out and put up; rest of bivy kit out of bag and under tarp; inflate sleeping mat; allow sleeping bag to loft. Now get rest of kit out, get changed in to dry clothes, make a brew, etc.

@metalheart – scotroutes links should be on their way. dRjOn’s blogs are here –
https://drj0nswanderings.wordpress.com

I’ll see if I can can find typical kit list entry – there are a multitude..

Here’s some blogs from my bookmark list:

Ian Barrington http://ianbarrington.com/ (his wife is behind Wildcat Gear)
Dave Barter: http://phased.co.uk/
Aidan Harding: http://www.aidanharding.com/
Greg May: http://www.gregorymay.ie/
Alastair Humphreys: http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/

Need to add a few more so interested in seeing what else folk come up with.

Interested in why the swap to 650b+ – how much betterer is it than a large normal 29 (2.4″ Ralph or similar?) – assuming you tried it specifically for bike packing?

Fantastic, great to see the wheels getting used.

I’m pretty sure my old 29er Revs (2012 Dual Air jobs) are still kicking around the shed somewhere. You are welcome to borrow them and see if they work out. I think the 2.8 NN just fit, although maybe I just didn’t push them hard enough to make them rub. I doubt you’d get a 3″ in there though and personally I’d always vote for the new frameset 🙂

Wow, lots of good info here. And lots of links. Thanks everybody.

@whitestone: Thanks for your posts (and links). What you are saying is kind of what I’m thinking. The other week was just a tester to see what was needed and how it went. It was a fantastic weekend weather wise and nice to have favourable conditions for the first outing. I’ve been checking out the TDR prep stuff and that’s forming what I think is the way forward. Less is definitely more.

I’m ambivalent about tarp/bivi v. tent. Combined weight of tent & bivi is not far off 1.5kg. A tent would be lighter. However, I already have both bivi/tarp… Tent additional (significant) expense… hmmm.

@TR: any chance I can get a shufty at your Wildcat set up? Like to see options before I commit to anything… If I can find your e-mail address I’ll ping you a mail.

@roverpig: yeah, done about 10 hours total on them so far. Only problem was getting to the bottom of a descent to find out the skewer had done its self loosening thing that Hope’s are want to do… I was even taking air (admittedly, very teeny-tiny air, but air all the same). For me 20psi on the back and 16-18 on the front seems to work. Lower on the back and I get some tyre squirm. I’d like to take you up on the lend of the Rev’s offer. Be good to see if 120mm works for me or not as well. Happy enough with the NN upfront at present, 3″ was just what I could go in the future…

@brassneck: I just fancied trying out fatter tyres. roverpig was selling (at an enticing price) and that allowed me to dip the toes in using my existing 29er. I now find myself with more or less a complete bike (bar frameset) and thinking something that would allow me to get fatter still if I fancied. I was looking at the Genesis because Bothy Bikes have one with the APidura bikepacking kit attached in their window. I was up there to go bikepacking (and my 650B+ wheels were left on it, as much to let my mate see as anything). A rigid bike would make sense for bikepacking I thought (plus it wouldn’t preclude sticking on sus forks if necessary later on). I like things loose-ish and dry and the 650B+ was fun on that stuff, better on that than in the tech/rooty stuff for me (momentum?).

I have toyed with the idea of getting a new (Mk II) Solaris & forks but that would double the budget and that’s not practical these days.

Got a bit of a personal (parent) problem on going at the moment, might not get much chance to post/reply back on here until tomorrow. Not being rude if no response…

No worry’s metal heart although I’m away this weekend. All my gears still on the bike.

I have the wildcat set up and an alpkit kanga and fuel bag as well + a revelate sweet roll + a uraltour frame bag and seat pack so you can see a few options.

Drop me a mail – it’s in the profile.

Interested in why the swap to 650b+ – how much betterer is it than a large normal 29

Well this is a good question.

I have 29×2.4 currently, and I find I do notice the drag on smooth surfaces or road if I run them at 25 or less. I actually prefer riding at 30+ psi because the bike feels generally quicker and all the other feelings that go with it. I only drop it if I know it’s going to be bumpy, which I do sometimes. If I am on a mostly rocky or bumpy ride I’ll drop them.

So depending on your route/geography, b+ may not be as good as 29 as if it’s smooth it’ll slow you down. Conversely, if it’s rough then b+ might be better to ride and lighter than suspension.

Of course with two sets of wheels you have the choice, which is the ideal place to be. I will get some b+ wheels when I get the chance.

@molgrips Pretty much my take on B+, the Alpkit Rumpus wheels and WTB tyres add about 1.5Kg to the bike but the increased plushness (for want of a better word) takes the sting out of small high frequency judder means you can maintain speed better.

And I’ve still not fitted the 29er wheels to my Pact. I really must get around to it, though I’m enjoying B+ too much to worry about it.

with all the names above its like a thread off Bearbones in here 😆

with all the names above its like a thread off Bearbones in here

I don’t know what you mean 😆

Someone lend me some b+ wheels and I’ll see if I’m quicker up my local test climb. I bet I would be actually given the surface.

Well, had a read of some of the blogs and its certainly fired me up (the Ian Barrington one especially) to do some proper stuff.

Trail Rat and Scotroutes are being very helpful and letting me check out their kit. Thanks to both. Its appreciated.

Roverpig is lending me some forks.

All I need now is to sort out the frame ‘option’…

Anyone any experience of the Longitude in 650B+/2016 flavour?

What else to look at (nothing exotic please, I’ve limited budget…)

Can you not just ride what you have?

FYI Neill

Deeside trail should be going live in next couple of weeks. Nothing to do with me but a local bike packing event.

Some good responses there. Have a feeling my 29er is going to be a bit challenged for space, but I’m tempted now to blag a set and give it a go.

I have 29×2.4 currently, and I find I do notice the drag on smooth surfaces or road if I run them at 25 or less. I actually prefer riding at 30+ psi because the bike feels generally quicker and all the other feelings that go with it.

I agree, I think it’s mainly down to where I live and ride 99% of the time, so I’ve not much to compare with. On harder surfaces, more rock, a little fatter and lower pressure might be fun, more effective or both (or neither ofc.)

@brassneck The B+ tyre sizings are all over the place.

I’ve a WTB Trailblazer 2.8″ on the rear, it’s only 2mm wider at the tread than the Bontrager XR3 2.2″ on my 29er rims (The Bontragers measure up within a mm or so of the stated width at the pressure I run them), of course the TB has more volume in the tyre. The 3.0″ WTB Bridger is 74mm, so basically the quoted width.

Do a search to see if anyone has run the wheel/tyre combo with your frame or one with similar clearance. Very hit and miss at the moment.

You can bikepack on regular wheels..

Or fat wheels or 26 inch wheels or 26 x1 3/4s

Exactly.

Whilst you need the light tent/sleeping bag/luggage and whatnot, pretty much any bike will do that’s capable of the trails you want to do.

You can bikepack on regular wheels.

Yeah, obviously.i don’t think that I’ve suggested otherwise on here. You are missing the & in the thread title. I did try and bold it but you can’t format titles. I had the wheels before I started down the b/p trail, and the other weeks bivi could just’ ve easily been on the 29er wheels. ETA: the other two bikes used (and in the photo) are 26″ Lapierre FSers….

The issue is my forks don’t work with the NN, I don’t fancy the t/blazer up front and I have most of a bike just sitting about in boxes. I’m liking the 650B+, I like my 29er, hey why not build a 650B+ bike that I can also use for bike packing. I know it’s just crazy thoughts… 😆